Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T02:05:24.497Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Assembling archaeological pedagogy. A theoretical framework for valuing pedagogy in archaeological interpretation and practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2014

Hannah Cobb  and
Karina Croucher
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Drawing on relational theoretical perspectives in archaeological discourse, this paper considers how we can address the undervaluation of pedagogy and pedagogic research in archaeology. Through examining the relationships between fieldwork, teaching, and research, in light of Ingold's concept of the meshwork and DeLanda's assemblage theory, the division between teaching and research is undermined, and students and pedagogy are recentred as fundamental to the production of archaeological knowledge. This paper provides a theoretical grounding for resituating our current practices, suggests practical means for change, and highlights the benefit to the archaeological discipline arising from a revaluation of archaeological pedagogic research and an enmeshed understanding of archaeological practice.

Keywords

meshworkassemblage theorypedagogyteaching and learningfieldworkepistemology
Type
Articles
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , December 2014 , pp. 197 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Academy of Medical Sciences, 2010: Redressing the balance. The status and valuation of teaching in academic careers in the biomedical sciences, at www.acmedsci.ac.uk/download.php?file=/images/pressRelease/126953379183.pdf, accessed June 2013.Google Scholar
Aitchison, K., 2004: Supply, demand and a failure of understanding. Addressing the culture clash between archaeologists’ expectations for training and employment in ‘academia’ versus ‘practice’, World archaeology 36 (2), 219–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aitchison, K., 2010: United Kingdom archaeology in economic crisis, in Schlanger, N. and Aitchison, K. (eds), Archaeology and the global economic crisis, Tervuren (Culture Lab Editions), 25–30.Google Scholar
Aitchison, K., and Edwards, R., 2008: Archaeology labour market intelligence. Profiling the profession 2007–08. Reading.Google Scholar
Aitchison, K., and Rocks-Macqueen, D., 2013: Archaeology labour market intelligence. Profiling the profession 2012–13. London.Google Scholar
Alberti, B., Jones, A.M. and Pollard, J. (eds) 2013: Archaeology after interpretation. Returning materials to archaeological theory, Walnut Creek.Google Scholar
Andrews, G., Barrett, J.C. and Lewis, J.S.C., 2000: Interpretation not record. The practice of archaeology, Antiquity 74, 525–530.Google Scholar
Barrett, J.C., 2001: Agency, the duality of structure, and the problem of the archaeological record, in Hodder, I. (ed.), Archaeological theory today, Cambridge, 141–64.Google Scholar
Bender, B., Hamilton, S. and Tilley, C., 2007: Stone worlds. Narrative and reflexivity in landscape archaeology, Walnut Creek.Google Scholar
Blackwell, A., 2013: Paper presented at the Catalyst Research Seminar, Interdisciplinary Research for Innovation, Lancaster University, 2013, at www.catalystproject.org.uk/content/catalyst-research-seminar-interdisciplinary-research-innovation-myths-facts-and-case-studi-0.Google Scholar
Chadwick, A., 1998: Archaeology at the edge of chaos. Further towards reflexive excavation methodologies, Assemblage 3.Google Scholar
Cobb, H., and Croucher, K., 2012: Field schools, transferable skills and enhancing employability, in Mytum, H. (ed.), Global perspectives on archaeological field schools. Constructions of knowledge and experience, New York, 25–40.Google Scholar
Cobb, H. and Croucher, K., forthcoming. Archaeology. Teaching, practice and research. Oxford.Google Scholar
Cobb, H.L., Harris, O., Jones, C. and Richardson, P. (eds), 2012a: Reconsidering archaeological fieldwork. Exploring on-site relationships between theory and practice, London.Google Scholar
Cobb, H.L., Harris, O., Jones, C. and Richardson, P., 2012b: Reconsidering fieldwork, an introduction. Confronting tensions in fieldwork and theory, in Cobb, H.L., Harris, O., Jones, C. and Richardson, P., (eds), Reconsidering fieldwork. Exploring on-site relationships between theory and practice, New York, 1–14.Google Scholar
Collis, J., 2001: Teaching archaeology in British universities. A personal polemic, in Rainbird, P. and Hamilakis, Y. (eds), Interrogating pedagogies. Archaeology in higher education, Oxford, 15–20.Google Scholar
Conkey, M.W., and Tringham, R.E., 1996: Cultivating thinking/challenging authority. Some experiments in feminist pedagogy in archaeology, in Wright, R.P. (ed.) Gender and archaeology, Philadelphia, 224–50.Google Scholar
Conneller, C., 2011: An archaeology of materials, London.Google Scholar
Croucher, K., 2012: Death and dying in the Neolithic Near East. Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croucher, K., Cobb, H. and Brennan, A., 2008: Investigating the role of fieldwork in teaching and learning archaeology, Lancaster.Google Scholar
DeLanda, M., 2006: A new philosophy of society. Assemblage theory and social complexity, London.Google Scholar
Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F., 1987: A thousand plateaus. Capitalism and schizophrenia, Minneapolis.Google Scholar
DeRoche, C.P., and deRoche, J.E., 1990: As I say, as I do. Teaching reflexity through a reflexive subject. Anthropology and education quarterly 21 (2), 128–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowson, T.A., 2000: Homosexuality, queer theory and archaeology, in Thomas, J. (ed.), Interpretative archaeology, London and New York, 283–89.Google Scholar
Dowson, T.A., 2006: Archaeologists, feminists, and queers. Sexual politics in the construction of the past, in Geller, P.L. and Stockett, M.K. (eds), Feminist anthropology. Past, present, and future, Pennsylvania, 89–102.Google Scholar
Edgeworth, M. (ed.), 2006: Ethnographies of archaeological practice. Cultural encounters, material transformations, Lanham, MD.Google Scholar
Edu-factory Collective (eds), 2009: Towards a global autonomous university. New York.Google Scholar
Everill, P., 2009: The invisible diggers. A study of British commercial archaeology, Oxford.Google Scholar
Fowler, C., 2013: The emergent past. A relational realist archaeology of early Bronze Age mortuary practices, Oxford.Google Scholar
Freire, P., 1972: Pedagogy of the oppressed. Harmondsworth.Google Scholar
Gatens, M., 2000 (1992): Power, bodies and difference, repr. in Thomas, J. (ed.), Interpretative archaeology. A reader, Leicester, 290–303.Google Scholar
Gero, J.M., 1994: Excavation bias and the woman-at-home ideology, in Nelson, M.C., Nelson, S.M. and Wylie, A. (eds), Equity issues for women in archaeology, Washington, 37–42.Google Scholar
Gero, J.M., 1996: Archaeological practice and gendered encounters with field data, in Wright, R.P. (ed.), Gender and archaeology, Philadelphia, 251–80.Google Scholar
Gero, J.M., and Conkey, M.W. (eds), 1991: Engendering archaeology. Women and prehistory, Oxford.Google Scholar
Giles, M., 2012: A forged glamour. Landscape, identity and material culture in the Iron Age, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., 2004: Archaeology and the politics of pedagogy, World archaeology 36 (2), 287–309.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., 2014: Archaeology and the senses. Human experience, memory, and affect, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Harris, O.J.T., 2014: (Re)assembling communities. Journal of archaeological method and theory 21, 76–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, O.J.T., in press: Revealing our vibrant past. Science, materiality and the Neolithic, in Whittle, A. and Bickle, P. (eds), Early farmers. The view from archaeology and science, Oxford, 327–45.Google Scholar
Harris, O.J.T., Cobb, H., Grey, H. and Richardson, P., 2012: A Viking at rest. New discoveries on Ardnamurchan, Medieval archaeology 56, 333–9.Google Scholar
Hodder, I., 1997: ‘Always momentary, fluid and flexible’. Towards a reflexive excavation methodology, Antiquity 71, 691–700.Google Scholar
Hodder, I., 1999: The archaeological process, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hodder, I. 2000 (ed.), Towards reflexive method in archaeology. The example at Çatalhöyük by members of the Çatalhöyük team, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. 2011a: Being alive. Essays on movement, knowledge and description, London.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. 2011b: Redrawing anthropology. Materials, movements, lines, Farnham.Google Scholar
Ingold, T., 2013: Making. Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture, London.Google Scholar
Jenkins, A., Healey, M. and Zetter, R., 2007: Linking teaching and research in disciplines and departments, Higher Education Academy, at www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/teachingandresearch/LinkingTeachingAndResearch_April07.pdf, accessed August 2013.Google Scholar
Jones, A.M., 2011: Prehistoric materialities. Becoming material in prehistoric Britain and Ireland, Oxford.Google Scholar
Joyce, R.A., 2002: The languages of archaeology, Oxford.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joyce, R.A., and Tringham, R., 2007: Feminist adventures in hypertext, Journal of archaeological method and theory 14 (special issue: Practising archaeology as a feminist, ed. Wylie, Alison and Conkey, Meg), 328–58.Google Scholar
Latour, B., 1999: Pandora's hope. An essay on the reality of science studies, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Lucas, G., 2001: Critical approaches to fieldwork. Contemporary and historical archaeological practice, London.Google Scholar
Lucas, G., 2012: Understanding the archaeological record, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Mathieu, R.D., 2004: Teaching as research. A concept for change at research universities. Research and teaching, delivered at Closing the Divide, An International Colloquim, at www.cirtl.net/files/MathieuTeaching-as-ResearchFeb2004.pdf.Google Scholar
Members of the Ardnamurchan Transitions Project, 2012: The struggle within. Challenging the subject/object divide on a shoestring, in Cobb, H.L., Harris, O., Jones, C. and Richardson, P. (eds), Reconsidering fieldwork. Exploring on-site relationships between theory and practice, New York, 13–130.Google Scholar
Morón-García, S., and Willis, L., 2009: Pedagogic research toolkit in engineering, at www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/documents/subjects/engineering/pedagogic-research-tool-kit.pdf, accessed June 2013.Google Scholar
Mytum, H. (ed.) 2012: Global perspectives on archaeological field schools. Constructions of knowledge and experience, New York.Google Scholar
Nieto, S., 1999: The light in their eyes. Creating multicultural learning communities, New York.Google Scholar
Olsen, B., 2010: In defense of things. Archaeology and the ontology of objects, Lanham, MD.Google Scholar
Olsen, B., Shanks, M., Webmoor, C. and Whitmore, C., 2012: Archaeology. The discipline of things, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Perry, J.E., 2004: Authentic learning in field schools. Preparing future members of the archaeological community, World archaeology 36 (2), 236–60.Google Scholar
Pope, R., 2011: Processual archaeology and gender politics. The loss of innocence, Archaeological dialogues 18 (1), 59–86.Google Scholar
REF, 2012: at http://www.ref.ac.uk, accessed June 2013.Google Scholar
Robb, J. and Harris, O.J.T., 2013: The body in history. Europe from the Palaeolithic to the future, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Smith, M.K., 1997, 2002: Paulo Freire and informal education, in The encyclopaedia of informal education, at http://infed.org/mobi/paulo-freire-dialogue-praxis-and-education, accessed June 2014.Google Scholar
Smith, M.K., 2012: What is pedagogy?, in The encyclopaedia of informal education, at http://infed.org/mobi/what-is-pedagogy, accessed June 2014.Google Scholar
Stierer, B., and Antoniou, M., 2004: Are there distinctive methodologies for pedagogic research in higher education? Teaching in higher education 9 (3), 275–85.Google Scholar
Tilley, C., 1989: Excavation as theatre, Antiquity 63, 275–80.Google Scholar
Watts, C. (ed.), 2013: Relational archaeologies. Humans, animals, things, London.Google Scholar
Wright, R.P. (ed.), 1996: Gender and archaeology, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Wylie, A., 1996: The interplay of evidential constraints and political interests. Recent archaeological research on gender, in Preucel, W. and Hodder, I. (eds), Contemporary archaeology in theory. A reader, Oxford, 431–45.Google Scholar
Yarrow, T., 2003: Artefactual persons. The relational capacities of persons and things in the practice of excavation, Norwegian archaeological review 36 (1), 65–73.Google Scholar
Yarrow, T., 2006: Sites of knowledge. Different ways of knowing an excavation, in Edgeworth, M. (ed.), Ethnographies of archaeological practice, Oxford, 20–32.Google Scholar
Yarrow, T., 2008: In context. Meaning, materiality and agency in the process of archaeological recording, in Knappett, C. and Malafouris, L. (ed.), Material agency, New York, 121–37.Google Scholar