On finding focus

Abstract

Few observers could argue with the proposition that archaeology has dramatically changed in the past couple of decades. Perhaps tacitly or even unknowingly adopting one of the central tenets of critical archaeology, archaeologists everywhere have learned to expand their audiences and to consider the contemporary meanings of their interpretations. Members of descendant communities and other stakeholders now commonly demand a role in the retelling of history. The 1930s view of ‘every man [sic] the historian’ has become ‘every person the archaeological interpreter’. Archaeology is no longer the sole purview of the ivory tower and the detached, absent-minded archaeologist. The days of sitting quietly in a well-appointed laboratory measuring potshards are largely gone. Only the best-funded, venerable of practitioners has this luxury today.